Creator Chronicles Controls

Creator Chronicles is a mouse-first village sim with a short keyboard layer. You pause the world, point at a building, and let parties fight in dungeons without a separate action-combat layout. This page is the control table for Windows and macOS Steam. Read it once, then return to Getting Started and actually demolish a burned house.

Nothing here is a gamepad map. If a bind feels wrong, pause first; almost every expensive mistake in this game happens at 3x speed with the HUD ignored.

Keyboard

Key	Action
Space	Pause or unpause
1 or F1	1x game speed
2 or F2	2x game speed
3 or F3	3x game speed
G	Open guild
H	Open herbs
B	Open build
F	Open dungeon list
Esc	Close the current panel

Space is the most important key on the board. New game gold disappears at 3x while you are looking at a contact portrait. Pause before you place a building, confirm an invite, list an auction stack, or send Hidden Swamp. Unpause only when the HUD still shows the gold you expected.

G is the roster and member brain. Use it with Recruit members in mind: if the member count is at the house cap, G will not invent a bed. H is the herb sheet; pair it with field output and the alchemy lab on Village buildings. B is the build catalog. F is the dungeon list that sends parties; pair it with Dungeons and Combat. Esc closes whatever modal you opened so you can see the map again.

Mouse, pan, and zoom

Move the camera with WASD or by dragging the map. The mouse wheel zooms. Left-click selects a member, building, or UI control. Right-click cancels the current action. That cancel bind is easy to forget when you are halfway through placing a house on the wrong tile.

Right-clicking a production building also performs one manual craft. Use that when you need a single bread loaf or potion now and the worker is still walking. It is not a replacement for staffing the building. If you right-click the auction or a house, you are not crafting; you are probably cancelling. Manual craft is for production tiles: farm output, alchemy, smithing, and similar workstations.

The top-left HUD is not a hotkey, but it is part of the control loop. It shows member count, village level, visitors, gold, and time. Look at it every time you unpause. Visitors climbing while herbs drop means you forgot an auction lock.

Speed discipline

1x is for first-hour construction, auction locks, and reading a battle log. 2x is for farming after the loop is stable. 3x is for watching a party you already trust. Speed does not make miners eat less. Speed does not stop Conqueror quits. If a world event pops from mood, a level-up, or village growth, tap Space, read it, then choose a speed again.

F1–F3 duplicate 1–3 if function keys are easier on your keyboard. Do not bind those keys to OS shortcuts that steal focus; this game wants them.

What controls do not do

There is no two-player bind. You cannot invite a Steam friend into Hidden Swamp. Hall of Battle, when it arrives on 14 September 2026, is asynchronous PvP against other masters’ parties, not a second mouse cursor in your village. Party Strategy potion rules are a full-launch combat setting, not a keyboard toggle in the demo.

Character creation choices are not remapped here. Race, class, profession, and difficulty lock on a new save; see Character Creation. Hardware that can actually run the client sits on system requirements.

Practice the loop paused: B to place a house, G to check the empty roster, auction bread, H to confirm herbs, F when three people exist. Then raise speed. The masters who struggle on launch day are not the ones who forgot Warrior’s weapon list; they are the ones who built a mine at 3x and sold the herbs while Esc was covering the HUD.

Keep Space under your thumb whenever gold, housing, or a dungeon send is on screen. The rest of the table is convenience. Pause is how a guild master writes a chronicle instead of a crash log, and it is the only bind this page needs you to remember after you close it.